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June 14, 2012 at 09:15 AM
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is about to spend $881 million on implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA), and it needs to do more to keep PPACA projects from running off the rails.
Officials at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) give that assessment in an IRS PPACA implementation risk management plan review prepared at the request of lawmakers at the Senate Appropriations Committee and the House Small Business Committee.
Congress included 47 provisions requiring IRS action in PPACA, and created challenges for the IRS by having about half of the 47 provisions take effect in or before 2010, James White, a GAO director, writes in a letter summarizing the GAO officials’ views on the IRS PPACA implementation risk management plan.
Because of the nature of the deadlines involved, the IRS is having implement PPACA at the same time that it’s doing long-range PPACA planning, White says.
The IRS, an arm of the U.S. Treasury Department, could do better at explaining who at the IRS will evaluate risk mitigation strategies, deciding how it will determine whether it has the resources to support the mitigation strategies chosen, and making sure managers document the reasons for their decisions, White says.
The GAO included a number of PPACA risk management plan recommendations in a 2011 plan review.
“While IRS developed a risk management plan for PPACA implementation that meets several leading practices, IRS did not take any actions to implement our 2011 recommendation on assessing mitigation strategies,” White says in the letter.
The IRS has set up a PPACA Executive Steering Committee to manage PPACA implementation.
